“The Mobile Food Town Hall will be held on February 25, 2011 at 1 South Van Ness Avenue, Atrium Conference Room, from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Click here or see our previous blog post, below, for more information.”

Now, what are the odds that three different people decided to join the Yelp all at the same time to post one-star reviews of the same old place? Pretty low, actually. Those are the haterz, they got riled up over the whole Second Street Food fight issue, one that just got picked up by the WSJ.

But what about the shills? Is it possible that someone with an ownership interest in already-poorly-rated Harvest & Rowe is posting multiple five-star reviews? (Would this be like writing an annual performance review of yourself for your boss to peruse? “I work well with others, all our great new ideas came from me…”)

But surprisingly, the Yelp (or somebody) has already taken down the five-star re-review from earlier this month. (That’s pretty smart Yelp, if you can figure things out like that, srsly.)

Now, speaking of which, what’s up with Jose R? He just happens to loooooove the Harvest & Rowe but he’s just not into the highly-rated Mixt Greens, the hated competition of Harvest & Rowe. Isn’t that funny? These days, you just can’t tell who is behind what, huh?

“The food trucks are a threat to us,” said Diane Tran, owner of Muffins, Muffins, a pastry and sandwich shop on Second Street and one of the restaurants that signed the police complaint against JapaCurry. “They park in front of us, take our customers and leave the truck running so we get the smell of gas and smoke in our shop. We wish they weren’t around here, because we don’t do well when they are.”

It’s easy to complain, huh? Point in fact, the JapaCurry truck has never parked in front of her business, seen here:

So, how can the owner of Muffins to the Second Power detect the smell of gas and smoke from one particular vehicle parked at least tens of yards away? Or maybe all that smoke is from her customers? Did she or somebody else before or does she or somebody else now want to sell cigarettes or something? Can’t quite tell:

(Hey, do you think the “E” in “E. Mar” stands for Eric? Well, it does! Hurray!)

She also sells the potato chips.

Here’s Sammy’s on Second. Do you think the owner would be able to tell if a food truck happened to be parked around the block on any particular day – do you think his sales of bags of potato chips go down due to all the potato chips that JapaCurry sells? (But JapaCurry doesn’t sell potato chips, see?)

And Tart to Tart, well that’s a chain, right? That’s a chain what sells potato chips ‘n stuff for lunch. (Is that your A-game, T to T?)

But what about all the popular places in the area? Are they whinging to the SFPD as well? Don’t know. But you’d think the more successful places might be too busy to hate ‘n stuff. I’d be curious to see a list of the aggrieved sometime.

Now, the way things were going, three-star-rated Harvest & Rowe was headed for 2.5 star territory last week until Yelp intervened over the weekend by deleting a mess of recent one-star reviews, some from quite experienced Yelpers.

See? There used to be 273, but loads just got cut:

Plenty of serious Yelpers don’t like this state of affairs one bit. See?

Apparently, you Yelpers aren’t allowed to give a one-star review just because you think the owner of some joint is acting unfairly.

Anyway, all this fooferall is breaking the Yelp, which is supposed to be all about you actually going into a place and then giving your opinion.

But the blowback continues. Here’s a recent five-star review that wasn’t written by H&R owner Alison Rowe or one of her sympathizing friends. From Alex K:

“Wow! This place is great!
I’ve never actually eaten here.
I’m just curious if Yelp deletes fake 5-star reviews with the same alacrity that it goes after well-meaning 1-star reviews.”

See?

Oh well. How will Yelp deal with this rebellion? We’ll see.

If I were curious about getting people to like H&R more, I’d take heed of what these people are saying – does none of this criticism ring true? Maybe Japacurry has nothing to do with the success or failure of any given eight-year-old breakfast/lunch spot?

Apparently, Alison Rowe, the villain in this saga, is lawyering up and, somehow, it seems her friend(s)/acquaintance(s) are acting to physically block the Japacurry Food Truck from parking in its legal spots on Second near Mission and on Mission near New Montgomery.

All right, so the JapaCurry Truck can’t park in its designated space on Second Street in the FiDi SoMA because the owner of a struggling, three-star-out-of-a-possible-five-rated breakfast/lunch place (which is kind of big and empty-looking usually, and has two very similar joints like right close by, and has to compete with extremely popular lunch places like Chipotle (yes, Chipotle, you would not believe the line) and the new Sushirrito (not too far away neither)) took direct action against the foreign invaders by starting a whispering campaign,* and then a letter campaign, and then a I’ll-park-my-own-damn-car-in-the-space-the-SFPD-just-gave-you-a-permit-for campaign, fine.

So that was it, no curry for you on Second Streetthis past Monday and Tuesday because the JapaCurry people don’t want to be where struggling, connected bidnesspeople are having coronaries, fine.

So on Wednesday, the truck parked near its designated Wednesday-Thursday space near New Montgomery and Mission, only to have existing restaurant owners call the cops again, again, and ask to see permits.

So on Thursday this week, yesterday, the truck was, once again, “unable to park” in its designated spot, so it headed south to Brisbane, far outside the realm of our local crybabies. See?

Hey, why doesn’t the SPFD get off its duff and find a place or two for the JapaCurry Truck to park north of Market in the FiDi since JapaCurry has already jumped through all the hoops and paid all the fees and, apparently, all the struggling food purveyors of SoMA are so close to going out of business?

Of course, successfully persuading Supervisors to make useless distinctions betwixt competitors to favor the more-established is not unprecendented (Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886)), San Francisco history-wise. But can’t we all get along? Can’t we see how the market’s moving and adjust? Can’t we open our own damn food truck and park it in front of an existing restaurant some days and achieve the synergy ‘n stuff? Yes, Yes We Can! Harvest and Rowe could have noticed trends and started up its own gosh darn food truck and followed the rules just the way the hated competition has already done, right? I mean, by the time a food trend is being written up in the Noo Yawk Times (check out the excellent copy and photos from San Francisco’s very own Telstar Logistics Fleet Management Officer Todd Lappin here), well, you’ve got yourself something to consider, right?

Oh what’s that? You’re not doing so hot lately with the bricks and the mortar, ‘specially on the Yelp, H&R?

“The vibe on this place was kinda weird, and seeing the other reviews and the whole food truck fiasco… Well, sadly it just makes sense. When you can’t put together a SOLID breakfast/lunch offering that engenders loyalty and word of mouth to bring in new business, well you probably are going to go apes#!t when a truck with edible and affordable fare parks outside.”

“I am BOYCOTTING harvest & rowe for threatening to block the legal parking space that JapaCurry has a SF permit for!!! There is NO reason for her selfish behavior – she doesn’t serve any food that would compete with what JapaCurry offers. She unrealistically assumes that customers will go to her place if JapaCurry wasn’t legally parked there – she is so wrong!! I am not affiliated with JapaCurry but saw the below article and can’t believe how childish adults can be these days. I also live nearby and will spread the word to ALL neighbors & friends! So glad Mixt Greens is in the ‘hood!”

“I think this pretty much says it all. Bullies suck”

Indeed.

The harassment campaign against the hated newcomer appears to be working, at least for today and tomorrow:

But, this will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against JapaCarry.